Biggest loser in brawl will be Latham

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It wasn't until he played the blame game that Mark Latham hit rock
bottom, Peter Hartcher.

THE oil billionaire J. Paul Getty once said that "a man may fail
many times but he isn't a failure until he begins to blame somebody
else". Mark Latham lost an election as leader of the Labor Party,
but that did not make him a failure.

True, it was the worst electoral performance by federal Labor in
70 years. Yet what has already been forgotten is that Latham did a
reasonably creditable job in leading Labor last year
nevertheless.

Consider three pieces of evidence. At Labor's lowest point under
Simon Crean, the party's internal polling showed it would have lost
a devastating 20 to 30 seats if an election had been held in about
August or September 2003.

In the event, Latham led Labor to a loss of five seats. Remember
the herculean scale of the challenge. The Government was riding an
unprecedented tide of national prosperity - house prices had
doubled since Howard took office, unemployment was at its lowest in
a generation and the stockmarket was at an all-time high. And
Howard had proved to be the most enduringly popular prime minister
in the 30 years of ACNielsen's polling.

To lose five seats in these circumstances was a reasonable
recovery from a looming disaster. This is a point Kim Beazley made
in loyal defence of Latham immediately after the October 9
election.

The second point is that at the time of the election Latham was
a popular politician. ACNielsen polling for the Herald gave
him an approval rating of 53 per cent, historically high for an
Opposition leader and not far behind Howard's 57 per cent. Newspoll
put Latham's approval rating ahead of Howard's, at 54 per cent
against the Prime Minister's 53.

And third, Latham was a solid local member. He improved his
share of the primary vote in his seat of Werriwa by 2.3 per cent on
election day.

Latham lost the election, but this did not make him a loser. It
is his behaviour since that has been dismal - a succession of
spiteful, hateful and egotistical acts that has culminated in the
publication of The Latham Diaries.

From what has emerged, it is clear this is less a memoir than an
act of toxic narcissism. Although the book's formal release isn't
until next week, we know, courtesy of News Corporation's decision
to buy the right to prior access, that Latham uses it as a vehicle
to wage a sustained attack on the Labor Party and on almost every
Labor politician of any standing.

Labor, he writes, is "an organisation based on a corrosive and
dysfunctional culture", and "irreparably broken".

"I no longer regard Labor as a viable force for social justice
in this country. Its massive cultural and structural problems are
insoluble."

Latham has long considered that key Labor structural problems
are its institutional links with the trade union movement, and its
dependence on Labor's state political machines. As leader, he
thought about breaking both sets of linkages but decided he could
not.

As Latham knows extremely well, not one of these ideas is new.
He does not seem to have a single critique that has not been made,
and made better, by others.

John Button's analysis of Labor's dysfunction, Beyond
Belief, published in Quarterly Essay in 2002, remains
the standout work. Button was the reformist industry minister in
the Hawke government. He is a man of considerable achievement who
did vital work in making the Australian economy competitive. He is
also a gifted analytical thinker and a skilful writer. Button
wrote, for example, that Labor "no longer represents contemporary
Australia, it may not even represent its members any more".

The principal difference between Latham's analysis and Button's
is that Button conducted a searing survey of the party without
insulting the people he had worked with - he did not seek to
maliciously injure the party's leadership; he did not betray the
people to whom he owed much of his success.

One of the striking features of Latham's career is that he has
consistently fallen out with every major figure with whom he has
worked closely, with the exception of Gough Whitlam and Paul
Keating. In his new book he corrects this omission by criticising
these men, too.

Latham assaults his predecessor as Labor leader, Crean, as well
as his successor in that thankless position, Beazley. He apparently
disparages all three living former Labor prime ministers. He
attacks his one-time employer Bob Carr. He undermines Labor's
federal secretary, Tim Gartrell. And he lashes almost every
significant figure on Labor's front bench, saving a particular
savagery for Kevin Rudd. This is especially perverse.

Rudd advised Latham against his ill-fated Iraq policy of "troops
home by Christmas" and then, when Latham proceeded regardless, did
Latham a tremendous service in defending the policy valiantly all
the way to election day.

The only blameless Labor figure, it seems, is Latham
himself.

His entire career has been with the Labor Party. The only time
in his adult life that he has managed to earn a dollar in the
private sector, outside Labor patronage, is in selling this putrid
manuscript, this studied betrayal.

Latham has hurt his benefactors, his colleagues, his party. He
has given a gift to the Government, which will use his words to
taunt Labor from here to election day.

As Button wrote three years ago of Labor's love for perpetual
fratricide: "To the average person the struggle probably looks like
a brawl in a pub that threatens to spill out onto the street; best
to walk past without making eye contact with any of the
participants."

He is right. Latham's ranting will bring nothing but even more
popular scorn for Labor. But the biggest loser, however, is Latham
himself.

Last year he failed to win an election, but it is only now that
he has become a true failure.

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1126750072711-smh.com.auhttp://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/biggest-loser-in-brawl-will-be-latham/2005/09/15/1126750072711.htmlsmh.com.auSydney Morning Herald2005-09-16Biggest loser in brawl will be LathamIt wasn't until he played the blame game that Mark Latham hit rock
bottom, Peter Hartcher.Opinion